Iran Building Mock American Aircraft Carrier

Iran is building a nonworking mock-up of an American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier that United States officials say may be intended to be blown up for propaganda value.

Intelligence analysts studying satellite photos of Iranian military installations first noticed the vessel rising from the Gachin shipyard, near Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf, last summer. The ship has the same distinctive shape and style of the Navy’s Nimitz-class carriers, as well as the Nimitz’s number 68 neatly painted in white near the bow. Mock aircraft can be seen on the flight deck.

The Iranian mock-up, which American officials described as more like a barge than a warship, has no nuclear propulsion system and is only about two-thirds the length of a typical 1,100-foot-long Navy carrier. Intelligence officials do not believe that Iran is capable of building an actual aircraft carrier.

4 COMMENTS

Well, the Iranians might be crazy, but they are definitely not stupid. It seems very foolish for ‘intelligence officials’ to assume that Iran is incapable of building one thing or another. The Iranians have built many weapon systems that are quite capable and dangerous. They don’t have to be brilliant or special, most of their technological achievements were simply bought from rogue unemployed Russian scientists willing to work for anyone who’ll pay the right price. Unfortunately, if the US (and Israeli) ‘intelligence community’ continue to underestimate the capabilities of Iran and its cronies to (mass) produce weapons of dangerous capabilities they will sooner rather than later find out how terribly unintelligent they are.